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6:Topic
6:Those who had been selected to die were led to gas chambers. In order to prevent panic, camp guards told the victims that they were going to take showers to rid themselves of lice. The guards instructed them to turn over all their valuables and to undress. Then they were driven naked into the "showers." A guard closed and locked the steel door. In some killing centers, carbon monoxide was piped into the chamber. In others, camp guards threw "Zyklon B" pellets down an air shaft. Zyklon B was a highly poisonous insecticide also used to kill rats and insects.
Usually within minutes after entering the gas chambers, everyone inside was dead from lack of oxygen. Under guard, prisoners were forced to haul the corpses to a nearby room, where they removed hair, gold teeth, and fillings. The bodies were burned in ovens in the crematoria or buried in mass graves.
Many people profited from the pillage of corpses. Camp guards stole
some of the gold. The rest was melted down and deposited in an SS bank
account. Private
business firms bought and used the hair to make many products, including
ship rope and mattresses.
This is to supplement the assignment given to you in the decree of January
24, 1939, to solve the
Jewish question by emigration or evacuation under the most favorable conditions
possible given
present circumstances. I hereby charge you to make all the necessary
administrative, practical, and
financial preparations for a Gesamtlösung [total/complete/comprehensive
solution] of the Jewish
question throughout Germany's European sphere of influence.
Insofar as these preparations will touch on the jurisdiction of other government
agencies, these are
to be asked to collaborate.
I further commission you to submit to me, before long, a master plan of
the administrative, practical,
and financial measures that need to be taken [to carry out] the sought-after
Endlösung
[final/definitive solution] of the Jewish question.
[Source: A J Mayer. Why Did the Heavens Not Darken: The "Final Solution"
in History. London:
Verso, 1990, pp. 292-293]
The significance of this letter is disputed. Some historians regard
it as a clear indication that German Jewish policy was now set firmly on
the track of direct physical extermination. Others, Mayer, for instance,
consider that the final direction was not yet set, hence the reference
in the letter to the previous policy of intensified
emigration. However, even Mayer concedes that the context was
now vastly different.
Nevertheless, various examples of deadly forms of experimentation dotted the timeline from late 1941 onwards. On September 3, 1941, the utility of Zyklon-B gas as an agent of mass killing was tried out on Soviet POWs. On December 8, 1941, Chelmno Death Camp became operational. Situated near the Polish city of Lodz, its victims were killed by driving them around in vans, the exhaust engine fumes being pumped into the hermetically sealed load compartment. The victims came from the Lodz ghetto, and included 5000 Roma and Sinti who had also been interned there. In January 1942, the killing of Jews at Auschwitz Birkenau using Zyklon-B began.
Even persons who were only suspected of opposing any of the policies
of the German occupation authorities were arrested, and on arrest were
interrogated by the Gestapo and the SD in the most shameful manner. On
the 12th June 1942 the Chief of the SIPO and SD published, through Mueller,
the Gestapo Chief, an order authorizing the use of " third degree " methods
of interrogation, where preliminary investigation had indicated that the
person could give information on important matters, such as subversive
activities, though not for the purpose of extorting confessions of the
prisoner's own crimes. This order provided:
" . . . Third degree may, under this supposition, only be employed against Communists,
Marxists, Jehovah's Witnesses, saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance movements,
parachute agents, anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet Russian loafers or tramps; in all
other cases my permission must first be obtained . . . Third degree can, according to
circumstances, consist amongst other methods of very simple diet (bread and water),
hard bunk, dark cell, deprivation of sleep, exhaustive drilling, also in flogging (for more
than twenty strokes a doctor must be consulted)."
The brutal suppression of all opposition to the German occupation
was not confined to severe measures against suspected members of resistance
movements themselves, but was also extended to their families.
In Poland the intelligentsia had been marked down for extermination as early as September, 1939, and in May, 1940, the defendant Frank wrote in his diary of " taking advantage of the focusing of world interest on the Western Front, by wholesale liquidation of thousands of Poles, first leading representatives of the Polish intelligentsia." Earlier, Frank had been directed to reduce the " entire Polish economy to absolute minimum necessary for bare existence. The Poles shall be the slaves of the Greater - German World Empire." In January, 1940, he recorded in his diary that "cheap labour must be removed from the General Government by hundreds of thousands. This will hamper the native biological propagation." So successfully did the Germans carry out this policy in Poland that by the end of the war one third of the population had been killed, and the whole of the country devastated.
It was the same story in the occupied area of the Soviet Union. At the
time of the launching of the German attack in June, 1941, Rosenberg told
his collaborators:
" The object of feeding the German people stands this year without
a doubt at the top of the list of Germany's claims on the East, and here
the southern territories and the northern Caucasus will have to serve as
a balance for the feeding of the German people.... A very extensive evacuation
will be necessary, without any doubt, and it is sure that the future will
how very hard years in store for the Russians."
Heydrich, who chaired the meeting, made it clear that responsibility
for implementing the Final Solution, would rest with the Reichsführer-SS
und Chef der Deutschen Polizei, that is, Himmler. As with other
instructions and orders considered above, there is nothing in the minutes
that directly specifies that under consideration is a
plan that involves the extermination of all Jews in areas under German
hegemony. That this was in fact the objective of the decisions taken
needs to be inferred in the context of the word-plays that charaterised
German official documentation on this subject.
Until this point, according to Heydrich, one of the main axis of Jewish policy had been emigration. Conquest of new territories in the east opened up other opportunities. In particular, a "further possible solution, to which the Führer has already signified his consent" was "deportation to the east." In point of fact, this was not a particularly new policy as it had been under consideration, and implemented to some limited degree, ever since the conquest of Poland. According to Krausnick, the most pertinent paragraph in the minutes was the following:
In pursuance of the final solution, special administrative and executive
measures will apply to the
conscription of Jews for labour in the eastern territories. Large
labour gangs of those fit to work
will be formed, with the sexes separated, which will be directed to those
areas for road construction
and undoubtedly a large part of them will fall out through natural elimination.
Those who remain
alive-and they will certainly be those with the greatest powers of endurance-will
be treated
accordingly. If released they would, being a natural selection of
the fittest, form a new cell from
which the Jewish race could again develop.
According to Krausnick it is particularly significant because the inference
can clearly be drawn that the Jews will either "fall out" because they
cannot meet the labour requirements, or be eliminated because they fall
into the category of "natural selection of the fittest." In any event,
such a policy would temporarily, and with some
tension, meet two German objectives: (1) increasing support for the
war effort by harnessing Jewish labour, and (2) ridding areas under German
hegemony of the racial enemy, albeit after utilising their labour potential.
These two policies were supported by different branches of the SS: (1)
by the race experts, who wanted to eliminate the Jews once and for all,
and (2) the WVHA, the SS Economic and Administrative Office. The
latter generally formed the view that until the war was won it was expedient
to use Jewish resources to that end. [Source: H Krausnick and M Broszat.
Anatomy
of the SS State. London: Paladin, 1973. p.81]
Precisely because there were two strands to this policy it is possible to lend a different interpretation to the Wannsee meeting than that offered by Krausnick. Mayer, for instance, places emphasis on the harnessing of the labour potential of the Jewish population of Europe, and concludes that there "was nothing definitive about the Wannsee Conference, nor could there be. Whatever its origin, it was held at an unexpectedly trying moment in the history of the Third Reich (Mayer refers to the reverses of the Russian campaign, particularly the halting of the Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow). War policy was in extreme flux, and so was Jewish policy."
Moreover, Hitler made statements subsequent to the Wannsee meeting which implied that the die had not yet been cast. On January 25, 1942, he stated that:
The Jew must get out of Europe. Otherwise we will get no European
understanding. The world
over he is the chief agitator against us. ...All I say is that he
must go away. If, in the process, he is
bruised, I can't help it. If he does not leave voluntarily,
I see no solution other than extermination.
[Source: A J Mayer. Why Did the Heavens Not Darken: The "Final Solution"
in History. London:
Verso, 1990, pp.306-307]
This statement was supposedly made in the presence of Himmler and Hans Lammers, from neither of whom, presumably, he had any need to hide a decision on extermination if he had already taken it. On the other hand, killings had already begun in Chelmno and advanced experimentation had taken place at in March 1942 in Auschwitz. Belzec would become operational two months later. After the Belzec Death Camp becomes operational, victims were killed by using carbon monoxide pumped in from tank engines though they subsequently changed to using Zyklon-B which proved more efficient.
Among the rules were those prescribing a rigid censorship concerning conditions within the camp; and I refer to the first page of the English text, paragraph numbered Article 11, and quoting:"Reichsfuehrer:"Today I report about the present situation of the concentration camps and about
measures I have taken in order to carry out your order of 3 March 1942:"1. At the outbreak of war there existed the following concentration camps:
"a. Dachau-1939, 4,000 prisoners; today, 8,000.
"b. Sachsenhausen-1939, 6,500 prisoners; today, 10,000.
"c. Buchenwald-1939, 5,300 prisoners; today, 9,000.
"d. Mauthausen-1939, 1,500 prisoners; today, 5,500.
"e. Flossenburg-1939, 1,600 prisoners; today, 4,700.
"f. Ravensbruck-1939, 2,500 prisoners; today, 7,500."And then it goes on to say in Paragraph Number 2, quoting:
"In the years 1940 and 1942 nine additional camps were erected:
"a. Auschwitz,
b. Neuengamme,
c. Gusen,
d. Natzweiler,
e. Gross-Rosen,
f. Lublin,
g. Niederhagen,
h. Stutthof,
i. Arbeitsdorf."
Flossenburg: “Extermination Through Work" Program"By virtue of the law on revolutionaries, the following offenders considered as agitators, will be hanged:"Anyone who, for the purpose of agitating, does the following in the camp, at work in the quarters, in the kitchens and workshops, toilets and places of rest: holds political or inciting speeches and meetings, forms cliques, loiters around with others; who, for the purpose of supplying the propaganda of. the opposition with atrocity stories, collects true or false information about the concentration camp and its institution, receives such information, buries it, talks about it to others, smuggles it out of the camp into the hands of foreign visitors or others by means of clandestine or other methods, passes it on in writing or orally to released prisoners or prisoners who are placed above them, conceals it in clothing or other articles, throws stones and other objects over the camp wall containing such information, or produces secret documents; who, for the purpose of agitating, climbs on barracks roofs and trees, seeks contact with the outside by giving light or other signals, or induces others to escape or commit a crime, gives them advice to that effect or supports such undertakings in any way whatsoever."
Once in the custody of the SS guards, the victim was beaten, tortured, starved, and often murdered through the so-called "extermination through work" program which I described the other day or through the mass execution gas chambers and furnaces of the camps, which were shown several days ago on the moving picture screen in this courtroom.
The reports of official government investigations furnish additional evidence of the conditions within the concentration camps. For example:
The work at these camps mainly consisted of underground labor, the purpose being the construction of large underground factories, storage rooms, et cetera. This labor was performed completely underground and as a result of the brutal treatment, working and living conditions, a daily average of 100 prisoners died. To the one camp Oberstaubling 700 prisoners were transported in February 1945, and on the 15th of April 1945 only 405 of these men were living. During the 12 months preceding the liberation, Flossenburg and the branch camps under its control accounted for the death of 14,739 male inmates and 1,300 women. These figures represent the deaths as obtained from the available records in the camp. However, they are in no way complete, as many secret mass executions and deaths took place. In 1941 an additional stockade was added at the Flossenburg camp to hold 2,000 Russian prisoners. From these 2,000 prisoners only 102 survived.
Flossenburg Concentration Camp can best be described as a factory dealing in death. Although this camp had in view the primary object of putting to work the mass slave labor, another of its primary objectives was the elimination of human lives by the methods employed in handling the prisoners.
Hunger and starvation rations, sadism, housing facilities, inadequate clothing, medical neglect, disease, beatings, hangings, freezing, forced hand hanging, forced suicides, shooting, all played a major role in obtaining their objective. Prisoners were murdered at random; spite killings against Jews were common. Injections of poison and shooting in the neck were everyday occurrences. Epidemics of typhus and spotted fever were permitted to run rampant as a means of eliminating prisoners. Life in this camp meant nothing. Killing became a common thing, so common that a quick death was welcomed by the unfortunate ones.
Upon arrival at a camp, the inmates were usually stripped of all their valuables and clothes. They were then shorn of body hair, disinfected, given a shower, and issued a striped prison uniform without regard to size. Each step of the process was designed to dehumanize the prisoners, both physically and emotionally. Each prisoner was given a number. At Auschwitz, for example, the number was tattooed on the arm, but some camps did not tattoo their inmates.
Life in the camps was a living hell. As described by Judah Pilch in "Years of the Holocaust: The Factual Story," which appears in The Jewish Catastrophe in Europe, a typical day in the life of a concentration camp inmate began at dawn, when they were roused from their barracks which housed 300-800 inmates each. Their "beds" were bunks of slatted wood two and three tiers high. Frequently three to four prisoners shared each bunk, not permitting space enough for them to stretch out for normal sleep. The inmates were organized into groups to go to the toilets, marched to a distribution center for a breakfast consisting of some bread and a liquid substitute for tea or coffee, and then sent out to work for 10-14 hours in mines, factories, and road or airfield building, often in sub-zero weather or the severe heat of summer. They were subjected to constant physical and emotional harassment and beating. The inmates' food rations did not permit survival for very long. Those who resisted orders of the guards were shot on the spot. Numerous roll calls were held to assure that no prisoners had escaped. If one did attempt an escape, all of the inmates suffered for it.
Unlike concentration camps, death camps had no barracks to house prisoners, other than those for workers at the camps. In order to process the murder of thousands of people, great pains were taken to deceive the victims concerning their fate. Jews deported from ghettos and concentration camps to the death camps were unaware of what they were facing. The Nazi planners of the operation told the victims that they were being resettled for labor, issued them work permits, told them to bring along their tools and to exchange their German marks for foreign currency. Food was also used to coax starving Jews onto the trains. Once the trains arrived at the death camps, trucks were available to transport those who were too weak to walk directly to the gas chambers. The others were told that they would have to be deloused and enter the baths. The victims were separated by sex and told to remove their clothes. The baths were in reality the gas chambers. The shower heads in the baths were actually the inlets for poison gas. At Auschwitz, the gas chambers held 2,000 people at a time. With the introduction of a cyanide-based gas called Zyklon B, all 2,000 occupants could be killed in five minutes. As a result of this technological "advancement," Auschwitz was able to "process" the death of 12,000 victims daily. Before the bodies were removed by workers with gas masks and burned in crematoria, the teeth of the victims were stripped for gold, which was melted down and shipped back to Germany. Innocent victims were exploited and desecrated to a degree unknown in human history.
Unlike the death camps of Treblinka, Chelmno,
Sobibor,
and Belzec,
which were built and operated solely to kill Jews, the two death camps
of Maidanek and Auschwitz also had a work camp attached. Upon arrival at
these two camps, a selection was made at the train station concerning which
Jews (about 10 percent of the arrivals) would be permitted to live and
escape immediate gassing in the gas chambers. These "lucky" survivors were
permitted to live only to the extent that they endured the physical and
emotional trauma inflicted upon them. They were given a food ration that
permitted them to survive for only three months. As they died from exhaustion,
beatings, and starvation, they were replaced with newly arrived victims.
Auschwitz was also used as the site for medical experimentation. Many of
these experiments had little scientific value but were only exercises to
discover how much torture a victim could endure until death. By the end
of 1944, an estimated two-and-a-half million Jews had died at Auschwitz.
More than a quarter of a million Gypsies also died there.
The remaining Jews at Majdanek were slowly being decimated by the sick and weak regularly being selected and sent to the gas chambers. Finally the last 18000 Jews were shot on 02 Nov and 03 Nov 1943 ,whilst loud music blared through loudspeakers; and in full view of peasant huts what were scattered around the camp. (I remember looking with envy at the peasants working around thir homes whilst I stood in Appeal Square in the early morning or evening.) I had worked as a doctor in field 2 in the hospital or field 3 looking after inmates injured at work or sick.
One day people were being selected to be transferred to work in an ammunition factory. A Jewish POW ,whom I befriended as he came from the same town as my mother pushed me into this group, and said every Jew who stays in Majdanek will be killed. In May 1943, a group of 1000 Jews were sent to Majdanek after they were not admitted to Treblinka as the gas chambers were temporarily dismantled. Also quite a few transports from the Warsaw Ghetto went directly to the gas chambers in Majdanek without any selection,because of overcrowding at the camp. Othes were doubly sentenced to death because they were Jews and they took part in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
By the way, when I revisited Majdanek with my wife and son in 1989 an
"uninvited guide" came up to us and recounted the story about the mass
shooting on Nov2-3 1943. He and his wife were witnesses as they lived
in one of those surrounding huts. He also mentioned "Jews are people
too."
I hope this incredible story of survival helps bring out the horror
of Majdanek.
[Dr. Stephen Nickelburg <bobo@next.com.au> father's own experience
at Majdanek.]
"Together with the German military occupation, there arrived in Budapest a 'Special
Section Commando' of the German Secret Police with the sole object of liquidating the
Hungarian Jews. It was headed by Adolf Eichmann, SS Obersturmbanfuehrer, Chief of
Section IV B of the Reich Security Head Office. His immediate collaborators were: SS
Obersturmbannfuehrer Hermann Krumey, Hauptsturmfuehrer Wisliczeny, Hunsche,
Novak, Dr. Seidl, and later Danegger, Wrtok. They arrested and later deported to
Mauthausen all the leaders of Jewish political and business life and journalists, together
with the Hungarian democratic and anti-fascist politicians; taking advantage of the
'interregnum' following upon the German occupation lasting 4 days, they have placed their
Quislings in the Ministry of the Interior."
On Page 7 of that same document, the 8th paragraph, beginning with
the words "Commanders of the death camps" and quoting:
"Commanders of the death camps gassed only on direct or indirect instructions of
Aichmann. The particular officer of IV B who directed the deportations from some
particular country had the authority to indicate whether the train should go to a death
camp or not and what should happen to the passengers. The instructions were usually
carried by the SS non-commissioned officers escorting the train. The letters 'A' or 'M'
"capital letters "A" or "M" on the escorting instruction documents indicated Auschwitz
(Oswieczim) or Maidanek; it meant that the passengers were to be gassed."
And passing over the next sentence, we come to these words:
"Regarding Hungarian Jews the following general ruling was laid down in Auschwitz: up
to the age of 12 or 14, older people over 50, as well as the sick, or people with criminal
records (who were transported in specially marked wagons) were taken immediately on
their arrival to the gas chambers."The others passed before an SS doctor who, on sight, indicated who was fit for work
and who was not. Those unfit were sent to the gas chambers, while the others were
distributed in various labor camps."In the so-called "Eastern Territories" these victims were apprehended for extermination...
The road to Auschwitz was opened on 19 March 1944. The German army occupied Hungary and Horthy was forced to appoint a pro-German government. There was no resistance. Soon Adolf Eichmann appeared with his small team to organize the deportation of all Hungarian Jews to death camps. The Hungarian genocide began in the spring of 1944. According to Veesenmayer, Hitler's plenipotentiary in Budapest, whose data is confirmed by other sources, 437,402 persons were deported from Hungary with the full cooperation of the new government, the civil service, the gendarmerie and the Jewish Council. Horthy and the people looked on passively. A few cheered, even fewer protested. Copies of the Auschwitz Protocol, information about the planned extermination of the Jews of Hungary was passed on to the Allies, to the Hungarian government, the Jewish Council, Horthy and the head of the Catholic Church. Nobody warned the victims. Nobody protested publicly. The British government forbade Palestinian Jewish commandoes to parachute into Hungary and arouse the Jews. The Americans refused to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz. The Canadian government declined to take in Hungarian Jewish children. The Allies disallowed trading trucks for lives earnestly offered by the SS.
The Pope addressed a personal plea to Horthy on June 25, 1944, which was followed by the warnings of President Roosevelt on June 26, and that of King Gustav of Sweden on June 30. Horthy prohibited further deportations. By now all the Jews from the countryside were gone. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were working day and night. The overload was thrown onto the constantly burning open pits. In Hungary the respite was only temporary. Eichmann, with the help of the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross Party, who were put into power in October 1944, continued his work. From the Jews of Budapest another 50,000 were handed over to the Germans. The number would have been 15,000 higher without the heroic activities of Raul Wallenberg. During the next six months another 15,000 Jews died within Hungary mainly as a result of the Arrow Cross atrocities. The most Jews of Budapest, however, survived, albeit decimated. But what happened to the 490,000 deportees? 50,000 who survived the Holocaust in Germany decided never to return to Hungary. 310,000 fell victim to genocide.
In mid-1945, 141,480 Hungarian citizens declared themselves Jews by religion, 1.6% of all Hungarians. Among these survivors women outnumbered men by 37%, in Budapest by 65%. There were few children left, 80% of them perished. The surviving elite left for the USA, Canada, Australia and France. The Jewish middle classes were financially broke. In 1946 the American JOINT stated that 90 to 95% of the Hungarian Jews needed aid. Many of the former craftsmen, merchants and industrial workers went to work in factories. This was a way of blending into the milieu. The youth rushed to the universities. Others joined the army, the police, the political police and the civil service. Most joined the communist party or the social democrats. There they felt safe from nationalism. At first all Jews felt truly liberated. Gentile Hungarians were not so sure. The present government, in any case, has recently eliminated Liberation Day, April 4, from the list of official holidays. But in 1945 the Provisional Government of Hungary tried to make the country safe for Jews. As a result of war crime trials, the leaders of the Arrow Cross Movement were hanged and close to 60,000 others were found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Certification Committees swung into action, probing into the past of civil servants. Too many people were compromised and they soon began to blame their problems on the Jews.
The political parties wanted to be popular and soon welcomed the Rsmall Nazis in their ranks. The government refused to admit national responsibility for the Hungarian Holocaust, even the properties of the survivors were not always returned. The gentile intellectuals again began to talk about the so-called RJewish QuestionS, that is, that there are too many Jews here and there, in one committee or another, or in one profession or another etc. Peter Veres, in charge of the land reform, was soon accused of introducing an unwritten anti-Jewish law: no land for Jews. In the fight against inflation, some of the papers printed caricatures of black-marketeers that could have been easily confused with drawing of Jews in the Stürmer during the Nazi era. Following a speech by Cardinal Mindszenty in a Budapest church, a crowd of a few hundred went on the streets to cheer Szalasi and Imredy, HungaryUs chief anti-Semites. The head of the Calvinist Church invited the Jews of Hungrary Rto clean up their actS. As a result of these development and decades of unrestrained anti-Semitic agitation small wonder that soon Jewish blood was flowing again.
In 1946 there were several pogroms. 21 May 1946, Kunmadaras. Peasants murder two Jews, eighteen are wounded. 1 August 1946. Miskolc. Industrial workers stage a pogrom. Two Jews are lynched. There were other anti-Semitic disturbances in many villages. The Jewish community now became openly critical of the government. For some of the Jews the hope for a new world in Hungary was finally gone. They no longer wanted to be Jewish Hungarian just Hungarian Jews. In the next two years at least 4,000 of them left for Israel. 1947 turned out to be a quiet year. The communists were organizing their take-over, both political and economic. Jewish businessmen lost their capital again through nationalization, the fascists were demonstrating and killing again in the village of Pocspetri (1948) and at the instigation of the Soviet Union an anti-Zionist campaign was initiated all over Eastern Europe. More Jews now turned their back on Hungary. In 1948 and 1949 10,307 arrived in Israel.
For the next forty years during the communist rule and Soviet occupation the Jews were safe. More or less. Popular anti-Semitism was no longer tolerated, the anti-Semitic popular writers were branded nationalist reactionaries. Only the Bolshevik state was allowed to practice anti-Semitism. During the first show trial, the Rajk trial, the leaders of the communist party made sure that three out of the eight accused were Jews. How else could they, the four top Jewish leaders of the state and the party show the people of Hungary, whom they considered fascist from a to z, their objectivity? More Jews were scared away again. In 1950/51 another 3693 of them managed to leave for Israel. The rest embarked on the old road of assimilation, unconditional support of the regime, or a retreat into private life. When Stalin initiated a vicious anti-Semitic campaign a few months before his death, his self-declared best pupil in Hungary, Matthias Rakosi, began preparing an anti-Semitic show trial. The case fizzled out with StalinUs death but communist Jews were gradually removed from responsible positions and the Jewish head of the secret police was imprisoned. The expulsion of the Jews from public life was completed during the Kadar regime.
In 1956 when the people of Hungary rose up against their domestic and foreign oppressors, Jews fought on both sides of the barricades. Jewish intellectuals again dreamt in that year that the days fo complete assimilation had arrived but the Jewish masses knew better. It was hard to tell that an AVO man was hanged because he was a secret policeman or because he was a Jew. A smattering of anti-Semitic incidents in north-eastern Hungary gave the ultimate incentive for emigration. 5,000 Jews left for Israel, over 20,000 for other countries, including about 8,000 who came to Canada. Then again silence decended on Hungary for the next thirty some years.
The Jews disappeared from public life. The government only left them to concentrate in the cultural life in large number. The leaders of the community kept up their total conformity, concentrated on helping the poor and the rabbis on attending the declining number of bar mitzvas and increasing number of funerals. In the mid-1970s Jewish life began to experience a miracle. The leaders of the Rabbinical Seminary challenged the traditional leadership of the community. Its head, Alexander Scheiber, advocated that the Jews of Hungary must be both Jewish Hungarians and Hungarian Jews at the same time. Assimilated young Jews developed an interest in their past, in their ancestors, that is, in themselves. Some went to see Scheiber, others met socially with fellow alienated Jews to discuss life, Jewish life.
When the communist state disintegrated, popular anti-Semitism surfaced again at football matches, in the high schools, and in the press. The statue of Wallenberg was besmirched.The populist wing of the ruling party today is led by the anti-Semitic poet, Istvan Csurka. A few weeks ago he led 15,000 of his followers in a mass demonstration on the streets of Budapest. On October 23, 1992, on the anniversary of the Revolution of 1956, neo-Nazi thugs wearing SS caps and flying Arrow Cross flags jeered the president of the republic. But there is another side to Hungary.
Forty years of communist rule had some positive sides to it. The nation was educated and Europeanized. The peasants of Hungary became farmers and since the 1960s the middle classes learnt the value of private enterprise. Pope John XXIII changed the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the Jews and this development had its impact on the Hungarian Church. Economic and religious anti-Semitism suffered a major set-back. Some say that part of Hungarian society began to assimilate certain Jewish traditions.
The Jews of Hungary became not only Hungarian Jews but also Jewish Hungarians. Jewish institutions are flourishing again in Hungary. Gentile Hungarians are anxious to prove that their country is a civilized place. The president and the prime minister of Hungary formed an honour guard at the befouled statue of Wallenberg. The parliament apologized to the Jewish community in the name of the nation for the crimes of the past and offered some financial compensation to the survivors of the Holocaust. To counter a Csurka demonstration over 100,000 Hungarians demonstrated silently in Budapest against neo-Nazism and intolerance in general. One can only hope that the 80,000 Jews who live in Hungary today may finally find their peace locally, provided that the anti-Semitic tradition of the past 100 years will be lingering on only on the controllable fringes of society. [By Peter I. Hidas, Dawson College, phidas@dawsoncollege.qc.ca]
The Case of Auschwitz:
Its HistoryAuschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. It was a complex of camps, including a concentration, extermination, and forced-labor camp. It was located at the town of Oswiecim near the prewar German-Polish border in Eastern Upper Silesia, an area annexed to Germany in 1939. Auschwitz I was the main camp and the first camp established at Oswiecim. Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was the killing center at Auschwitz. Trains arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau almost daily with transports of Jews from virtually every German-occupied country of Europe. Auschwitz III, also called Buna or Monowitz, was established in Monowice to provide forced laborers for nearby factories, including the I.G. Farben works. At least 1.1 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included between 70,000 and 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, and about 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
Auschwitz was a complex of 39 camps and sub-camps located in Upper Silesia. This was a major center of German war industry, and most of these camps were attached to specific industrial enterprises as sources of slave labor. The biggest and best-known of these was at Monowitz, south of the town of Auschwitz. It was called Auschwitz III, and was connected with the "Buna" synthetic rubber plant operated by I.G. Farben.
The original Auschwitz camp, located on the western outskirts of the
town, was called Auschwitz I, also the "Stammlager" (Stem-camp). 
Auschwitz I, the main camp in the Auschwitz camp complex, is the first
camp established near Oswiecim. Construction began in May 20, 1940, in
the Zasole suburb of Oswiecim, in artillery barracks formerly used by the
Polish army. The camp is continuously expanded through the use of forced
labor. Although Auschwitz I is primarily a concentration camp, serving
a penal function, it also has a gas chamber and crematorium. An improvised
gas chamber is located in the basement of the prison (Block 11). Later,
a gas chamber is constructed in the crematorium. In June 1940, it
served as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners. This
was its main function throughout the war.
The second camp of the complex, Auschwitz II, was built in October 1941 about two miles from the Stammlager near the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau in German). Of the three camps established near Oswiecim as part of the Auschwitz camp complex, Auschwitz-Birkenau has the largest prisoner population. It is divided into nine sections separated by electrified barbed-wire fences and patrolled by SS guards and dogs. The camp includes sections for women, men, Roma (Gypsies), and families deported from the Theresienstadt ghetto. Auschwitz-Birkenau plays a central role in the German plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Four large crematoria buildings are constructed between March and June 1943. Each has three components: a disrobing area, a large gas chamber, and crematorium ovens. Gassing operations continue until November 1944. Originally planned to accommodate Soviet POWs, it was much larger than the original camp, with a capacity of about 100,000 prisoners (compared with 20,000 at the Stammlager). The extermination facilities were built at Birkenau in the Spring of 1942 (after some experiments at the original camp using Soviet POWs as guinea pigs). Eventually between 1.1 and 1.5 million people (according to current estimates prepared by Franciszek Piper of the Auschwitz State Museum) were gassed at Birkenau. 90% of them were Jews, and most were gassed on arrival, never being registered as prisoners at the camp.
On May 31, 1942, the Germans established Auschwitz III, also called Buna or Monowitz, in Monowice to provide forced laborers for the Buna synthetic rubber works (part of the German conglomerate I.G. Farben). I.G. Farben invested more than 700 million Reichsmarks (about 1.4 million U.S. dollars in 1942) in Auschwitz III. Prisoners selected for forced labor are registered and tattooed with identification numbers on their left arms in Auschwitz I. They are then assigned to forced labor in Auschwitz or in one of the many subcamps attached to Auschwitz III.
Of the 400,000 registered prisoners of the Auschwitz complex, about
half were Jews. Poles were the next largest group, then Gypsies.
The best way to make sense of all this is to consider Auschwitz to have
been really two separate camps, VL Auschwitz in which over 1 million Jews
and a few thousand Gypsies were systematically gassed (total, and KL or
KZ Auschwitz in which about 140,000 Jews, 70,000 Poles and thousands of
persons of other nationalities died of starvation, beatings, disease, exposure,
exhaustion, etc. The total number who passed through the camp is
therefore about 1.3 million. So, How many died at Auschwitz?
Gassed on Registered prisoners Total
Nationality Arrival Total Died Survived Deaths
----------- -------- ------- ------- -------- -------
Jews 890,000 205,000 95,000 110,000 985,000
Poles 10,000 137,000 64,000 73,000 74,000
Romany 2,000 21,000 19,000 2,000 21,000
Soviet POWs 3,000 12,000 12,000 — 15,000
Others — 25,000 12,000 13,000 13,000
------- ------- ------ ------ -------
Total 905,000 400,000 202,000 198,000 1,208,000
(The picture to the left is an aerial photograph showing the gas
chambers and crematoria 2 and 3 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II)
extermination camp. Auschwitz, Poland, August 25, 1944.)
On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and liberated the remaining prisoners. Only a few thousand prisoners remained in the camp. Almost 60,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced on a death march from the camp shortly before its liberation. During the forced evacuation of Auschwitz, prisoners were brutally mistreated and many were killed. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind. During its brief existence, at least 1.1 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz. Other victims included between 70,000 and 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma (Gypsies), and about 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
Subject: Gabor Hirsch
I am a survivor of Auschwitz/Birkenau. I was looking for other survivors to find answers of some of my questions regarding the past. Please excuse me for all my grammatical and spelling errors and hope you still understand my letter.
As an introduction, a few words to my person. I am Hungarian by origin, born 9. Dec. 1929. in Bekescsaba, a town with about 3000 Jews at that time, in south of the country, near the Romanian boarder. Our ghetto was deported on June 26 1944 to Auschwitz/Birkenau, - just 20 days after the D-day, invasion of the allied - . I stayed in different camps in Birkenau, survived with luck different selections and was liberated on January 27 in Birkenau. After the liberation I 7 month in different soviet camps and returned in September to Hungary. I stayed there until the uprising in 1956, then I emigrated to Switzerland.
Regarding the dates, I have a very few milestones I know for sure. The date of our arrival to Birkenau, 3. November, arrival of a group from Sered or Theresienstadt, after the gaschamber ceased operation, December when in hospital and when I was tattooed and the liberation, the other dates or taken over from matching testimonies.
Lately I saw a documentary Film on the TV with three witnesses, one of them made a remark, mentioning that according her experience and information were final. This remark made me upset, because I know from my own experience of two cases of reselections where after the selection a second selection took place giving a second chance for a few of the youngsters. I saw very few references to such reselections. One of this happened around the High Holidays in 1944 on the 26. September 1944, the Day of Atonement. In the Session 68 protocol of the Eichmann Trial, Josef Kleinman describes this selection It was in the BIIe gypsy camp in Birkenau under the supervision of Dr. Mengele. We had to pass under a yardstick and all the smaller ones who didn't pass the stick, were separated from the others and closed in two Blocks. I was in Block 21 or 23. Either on the same day or on the next one a reselection took place, if I remember correctly it was Dr. Epstein, a professor from Prague, who found I believe about 21 of us still able-bodied and we were released that time. I saw this occasion recorded in different places but never the 21 who survived.
The other occasion was a few weeks later, a few days after the revolt in the crematorium. I can't recall the circumstances of the selection, but I was between the ones who failed the selection and we were locked in two Blocks in 11 and 13. I was in Block 13 somehow I was able to notify my cousin about my fate (he was "piple" in Block 11) and he was able to organize my transfer to Block 11. I can't tell whether he wanted to comfort me, but he told me, that he expected that there will be a reselection in Block 11 because several of the inmates came from workingcamps. He fed me, organized some cleaning facilities, a betterjacket, to look more presentable in case of an other selection, This time, in contrast to the earlier praxis, - when inmates were carried away during the night with trucks -, we were to march during daylight escorted by guards an dogs to the gaschambers/ crematorium. We had to undress, then a group of officers arrived there was a final (re)examination, we had to do some exercises, at the end 51 young boys were declared still fit to work. We were allowed to choose some clothes and dress us up. The rest, some 600, were sent before our eyes and while we dressed, to the gas-chamber. On our way back to the camp, I recall seeing next group - from Block 13 - waiting between the crematorium building and the hedge surrounding the promises. I remember, I saw between them an about 18 years old fellow from my home town Bekescsaba.
We, the 51 boys, returned into the gypsy camp Block 25?. This was on the day of Simhat Thora, 10. October 1944. The dates I found out later, from the (Session 71, witness Nachum Hoch) protocol of the Eichmann Trial. Martin Gilbert describes in his book "Holocaust, the Jewish tragedy" in the chapters " September 1944: the Days of Awe" and "Revolt at Birkenau".
June this year I spent some time in Hungary and I visited also the archive of my hometown. I found in the registry an entry of death from the 16 year old boy I supposed to recognize on my return from the crematorium, the date of death was registered Auschwitz 1944, October 10, most entries from the Jewish victims of my hometown are 1944 June 29, our arrival in Auschwitz/Birkenau. A few line after Nahum Hoch's testimony Martin Gilbert mentions a same day recording in Salmen Lewental's diary about the six-hundred, because we undressed and dressed inside the building, if I am correct it might be the group from Block 13 with the fellow I mentioned before. In the Eichmann Protocol 68 and 71 the address of the witnesses are given. In addition in session 71 there is a notice about three other survivors one in Jaffa and two in Haifa. In addition the Attorney General states: "The whole episode is well known in Holocaust literature, Your Honor - it is described there."
I appreciate any additional information, from survival or information about documentation about the above mentioned cases or about persons involved.
Gabor Hirsch
im Gupfacher 22
CH-8133 Esslingen
Switzerland
hirsch@cyberlink.ch
Himmler's
Poznan Speech, October 4, 1943
Michael R. Marrus, in his book, The Holocaust in History, writes
about the targets of Nazi murder:
"The Nazis murdered between five million and six million Jews during the Holocaust, two-thirds of European Jewry and about one-third of the entire Jewish people. But a staggering 55 million may have perished in all theaters during the Second World War...including some 20 million Soviet citizens...five million Germans, and three million non-Jewish Poles...In all, some 18 million European civilians may have died as a result of famine, disease, persecution, and more conventional acts of war."Awesome as they are, therefore, numbers do not in themselves prescribe the singularity of the Holocaust. But they provide a clue. For the proportion of European Jews killed during the Second World War, with roughly one of every three civilian deaths in Europe being that of a Jew, was undoubtedly greater than that of any other people, because of the Nazis' policy toward them. Unlike the case with any other group, and unlike the massacres before or since, every single one of the millions of targeted Jews was to be murdered. Eradication was to be total. In principle, no Jew was to escape. In this important respect, the Nazis' assault upon Jewry differed from the campaigns against other peoples and groups of Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Poles, Ukrainians, and so on. Assaults on these people could indeed be murderous; their victims number in the millions, and their ashes mingle with those of the Jews of Auschwitz and many other camps across Europe. But Nazi ideology did not require their total disappearance. In this respect, the fate of the Jews was unique."
Gypsies
Approximately a half million Gypsies (a dark-skinned, Caucasian ethnic group targeted by the Nazis) were murdered out of approximately 1.6 million who were living in Europe. The Gypsies in Germany and the occupied territories of the German War machine were subjected to many of the same persecutions as the Jews, e.g., restrictive, discriminatory laws, isolation and internment, and mass executions at their camp sites, in labor camps and death camps.
Polish Christians
Of the six million Poles murdered by the Nazis, half were Polish Christians. The Nazis considered the Poles and other Slavic peoples to be sub-human destined to serve as slaves to the Aryan "master race." The Polish intelligentsia and political leadership was sought out specifically for execution, and other Polish civilians were slaughtered indiscriminately. Among the dead were more than 2,600 Catholic priests.
Ukrainians
Almost four million Ukrainians fell victim to Nazi slaughter, through combat, starvation, and terror, particularly as a result of the efficient Einsatzgruppen. Of these, 900,000 were Jews, according to Bohdan Wytwychky's The Other Holocaust: Many Circles of Hell. Other Victims of Nazi Genocide
The Germans rounded up thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals and sent them to the death camps for extermination. Homosexuals were forced to wear pink triangles on their clothing paralleling the yellow Star of David for Jews.
Death Marches
By the beginning of 1945, the Soviet troops were advancing through Poland. The retreating Germans forced all remaining Auschwitz prisoners to march toward Germany under indescribably cruel conditions. Approximately 20,000 of 58,000 prisoners died en route, from exhaustion, starvation, cold, beatings, and executions by guards.
In his bunker, in the Chancellory building in Berlin, knowing that the war was lost and that the "1,000 Year Reich" had lasted only a few years, Hitler committed suicide hours after marrying Eva Braun. Germany formally surrendered to the Allies on May 7, 1945. By the end of the war, more than 55 million had died and 35 million wounded. Only 17 million of the dead were soldiers.
April 9, 1940
Germany invaded and occupied Denmark.
April 27, 1940
Himmler ordered the establishment of a concentration camp at Auschwitz.
April 30, 1940
The ghetto at Lodz, Poland, was sealed off.
June 4, 1940
Germany invaded Holland, Belgium, and France.
June 29, 1940
Marshal Petain surrenders France to the Germans.
September 27, 1940 The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis was
established.
September 27, 1940 The Warsaw Ghetto was sealed off,
making thousands of Jews inside virtual prisoners under house arrest.
June 22, 1941
Germany invaded Greece and Yugoslavia.
June 22, 1941
The Germans attacked and declared war on the Soviet Union.
July 8, 1941
Wearing of the Jewish Star was decreed in the German-occupied Baltic states.
July 31, 1941
S.S. Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich was appointed by Göring
to carry out the "Final Solution", the murder of all the Jews in Europe.
September 1, 1941 Wearing of the Jewish
"Star of David" was decreed throughout the Greater Reich.
October 1, 1941
All Jewish emigration was halted.
October 14, 1941 Mass deportation
to concentration camps of Jews from all over Nazi-controlled Europe began.
December 8, 1941 27,000 were massacred
in Riga.
October 23, 1941 34,000 were
massacred in Odessa.
October 28, 1941 34,000 were
massacred in Kiev.
November 6, 1941 15,000 were massacred
in Kovno.
December 7, 1941 The Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States entered the war.
December 8, 1941 Chelmno
death camp on the Ner River in Poland opened and the first gassing took
place.
December 11, 1941 Germany declared war
on the United States.
October 17, 1942 The
Allied Nations pledged to punish the Germans for their policy of genocide.
Winter of 1943
The tattered and frozen German army on the Eastern front surrendered to
the Soviets at Stalingrad.
April 1943
The Bermuda Conference on Refugees was convened. The agenda was to discuss
action by the Allies to rescue refugees in Europe under
Nazi control. No formal action was agreed to.
October 7, 1943
Hitler ordered that all Jews of Denmark be deported to the death camps
in Poland. Almost 95% of Danish Jews were whisked to Sweden,
escaping the S.S.
March 18, 1944
The Germans invaded and occupied Hungary. Deportations of Hungarian Jews
to Auschwitz followed under the direction of Adolf
Eichmann.
Mostly all of the half-million Hungarian Jews were sent to the gas chambers.
June 1, 1944 D-Day The Allies invaded France
at Normandy.
